


Kissed By Fire

by misskayeedee



Series: Stories of the Song [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, POV Sandor, Post-season 7, Spoilers for Season 7 Episode 7, TV Show Universe, What I want for Season 8
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-21 02:23:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11934342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misskayeedee/pseuds/misskayeedee
Summary: After traveling with Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen to Winterfell, Sandor Clegane is called to audience with the Lady of Winterfell.An imagining of the scene we need in Season 8.





	Kissed By Fire

When she had him summoned to the battlements of Winterfell, he wasn’t sure he would make it out of the encounter alive.

Sandor Clegane had learned, and learned well, that the Stark girls were made of something stronger than anything he had ever known. Both had survived insurmountable odds, and he knew that nothing short of the Long Night would make them suffer fools ever again.

They simply refused to accept what the world had planned for them.

As a man shaped by his past and facing what amounted to his own fate before him, it confounded him to no end.

He suspected that for all the sins that they could hold him accountable for, that he may well end up like Petyr Baelish, and rightly so.

Lady Sansa Stark stood sentinel along the north wall, staring towards the horizon as if she fully expected the Dead to march out of the tree line any second. Her black cloak and tightly laced dress were armor against the cold and against the familiarity he felt for her youth in summer silks of Tully blue.

Only her hair stood unbound, and flying like flames in the harsh winter winds.

She was as beautiful as she had always been, but now her edges were sharper than glass and her eyes were icy and distant.

Great respect was always afforded to the Men of Winter, but looking at her against the grey landscape, Sandor knew immediately that the Women of Winter held infinitely more resolve.

He found himself at a great loss of how to approach her.

There was no one to protect her from, and no lessons to teach her that she hadn’t already learned at the hands of scum and villains greater than he.

Without such things, or even her fear to protect him from what truths her eyes held, he stopped far, far away from her and gilded himself for what words she would use to bring about his destruction.

“If the lone wolf dies, what could a lone Hound hope for?”

Her voice was no longer a chirp, but the velvet growling of a she-wolf, so soft that he had to strain to listen to her over the wind.

“’m not a Hound anymore,” he muttered in reply, and nervously palmed the hilt of the sword on his hip. For all he knew, the She-Wolf or Brienne the Beauty could be lurking past the far parapet, waiting for an order or a hint to attack.

“No,” Sansa conceded, and turned to regard him.

Never had he felt so naked. She stared at him baldly, with little regard for his comfort, and he shifted from foot to foot, biting his tongue against a defensive snarl.

Sansa Stark had won the right to stare all she wished, for he had shamed her and failed her; threatened a song from her lips and left her to the lion’s den, and she had come through it stronger than he had.

He waited.

“At first what I couldn’t determine was _why?_ ” Sansa asked briskly, turning away and back to the horizon. Confused, Sandor opened his mouth to reply, but she cut him off. “You never hurt me, but _why_ did you never hurt me?”

This was worse than any torture he had endured. To wait patiently, as she found her own conclusions and sentenced him for them.

“I figured your reasons must have been malicious,” she said, without anger. “You were looking for compensation that you assumed you would receive later on, or figuring some plot that hinged on my safety in return for yours.”

It was quiet except for the breath of wind over the walls, chilling his leg and making it ache.

“Everyone has an ulterior agenda,” she began again, and her voice was a bit warmer, a rueful twist to her lips showing her dark amusement. “It took me a while to grasp fully, but Littlefinger taught me this over time.”

A prickle of anger ran up Sandor’s spine, and it was all he could do to keep his hand gripped on the pommel of his sword. The only thing he could ever begrudge Sansa Stark was the joy he might’ve felt by running the tiny man through with a blade in her honor.

But she didn’t need him anymore. She had claws of her own.

“I figured these ulterior motives were why you protected Arya as well,” she reasoned slowly, and laced her fingers together tightly. “It took me a while to determine that I was wrong. I never expected the truth. You see…”

Suddenly, she turned to face him, and with purposeful steps, marched right up until she was barely a foot away from him.

He froze like prey before a huntress.

“I cannot count the number of men who have claimed to love me,” she explained and her gaze dropped sharply to his chest. Sandor’s heart stuttered when he heard her speak the word he feared most leaving her lips. It was coming now, and there was no way to defend against her killing blow. “I cannot count the horrors those men put me through.”

Her eyes raised back to his, and he found determination and something unnamed and powerful in the blue of them.

Sandor had to look away.

“None of them, not one, has done half as much good as what you have done for me and my family.”

 _Not nearly enough as what you deserved,_ he wanted to scream at her. But he squeezed his eyes shut against the burning in them, and steeled himself for her onslaught.

“Thank you,” Sansa breathed, and his eyes snapped open to gape at her. A beautiful flush of pink graced her high cheekbones. “For Arya, and Jon.”

A hand, small and gloved in sleek black leather, touched his elbow. He felt it burn through all the many layers he had stacked against the cold, and up his arm to his already distressed heart.

“How does a man who no longer believes in songs love so greatly?”

A gasp escaped his lungs, weak and vulnerable. He felt like a pup again. Before Gregor and fires and Baratheons and Lannisters. He stared at Sansa, eyes wide in terror.

But he found her smiling softly at him, no amusement or scorn, just a delicate sort of peace.

“You love me, Sandor.”

It was not a question.

He was done for.

All he could do was hang his head to stare at his boots, and contemplate how a name as plain as his could sound so beautiful out of her mouth.

Her fingers dragged down his arm, barely a breath of touch, to grasp his hand against his pommel.

“King Robert told my father once that he should get me a dog, and that I’d be happier for it.”

Sandor snorted, and he heard the hint of a laugh bubble out of her chest. Her thumb rubbed the back of his hand, enough that he could feel the goosebumps rise on the back of his neck in response. It was all he could do to keep his footing.

“But I have need for someone else,” Sansa mused, and stepped closer to him still. The wind blew her hair until the tips of the strands tickled his face. “Someone good, and kind and strong. Like my father wanted for me.”

“I’m not a knight, Little Bird,” he rasped roughly, and tried to pull away.

Reality wouldn’t allow him to continue in this vein, and he very much didn’t want to consider what the White Wolf and his Dragon Queen would do if the Lady of Winterfell was found to have made this sort of mistake.

But Sansa would not let his hand go, and tugged him back until they almost bumped into one another.

She was staring right at him, and for the first time in what had to be years, Sandor felt as if someone truly saw him standing before them.

“No,” she agreed once again. “Not a knight, and not a Hound.”

“Just a man,” he said, trying with all his might to make her see his reasoning in his eyes and in his words before they were both lost to folly.

But it was for naught. The Stark girls would not accept what the world expected of them.

“Aye,” she replied, and his heart stopped completely at hearing Sansa Stark speak so roughly. Her tongue poked out to wet her bottom lip as she considered him.

And before he could reply, she shot up to the tips of her toes and crushed her lips to his in a bruising kiss.

It was all the destruction and consumption of burning, with none of the pain.

He couldn’t breathe surrounded by her.

So, he pulled back, trembling and heartsick like a young lad, and dropped to his knees at her feet. His arms snaked around her waist, and his head pillowed upon her breast, listening to the thundering speed of her heart against his ear.

She held him like he was small, and like his arms and weight weren’t crushing her. Her fingers carded carefully through his hair, and she placed light kisses on the top of his head as she shushed him and consoled him. The ends of her hair curled in front of his nose like licks of flame.

Suddenly the phrase the Wildling cunt had used came back to him, striking him like lightening to his already frazzled nerves.

“Just been kissed by fire,” he breathed into her sternum before he could rethink the stupidity of his words.

“Hm," she hummed against his forehead, staring over his head at the edge of the World of the Living. "That's good a name as any for a song such as ours.”

And he smiled.


End file.
